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Chapter Text

When the mirrors of England were broken, when the King's Roads were opened once more, it was more than magic that came flooding back into the realm. It was more than magic, too, that was pulled the other way, out beyond the veil. For the Raven King had conquered in more than Faerie, and it was more than Faerie to which his Roads travelled, and there were things beyond the reaches of them that stewed in bitter hatred for all that he had wrought. When England's mirrors were broken, and England's borders laid open, and the Raven King himself still nowhere to be found, those things saw that opportunity had come. They realised that here was an opening, and here was a gate, and here was vengeance close at hand.

And so they came. Demons and monsters and stranger, alien things. They came from the lost spaces beyond the King's Roads, and they drew their death and their decay behind them. Indeed, they sent it ahead of them, for it was their decay that England knew first, long before it realised what they were or why they had come.

It began as a plague. An illness, spread from the King's Roads, creeping out from shattered mirrors all across the kingdom and striking down all who came across it. Where its victims fell, the veil grew thin, and houses, villages, towns and cities began to fall between the worlds. The King's Roads came to England, and England fell to the King's Roads. She became a wasteland, caught between many worlds, a spiderweb of decay and horror in which death and disease plied their trades at leisure. England's fields became graveyards, her towns charnel houses, her roads webs of magic, all of them fading between one world and the next such that at any moment one might walk from sunshine into horror, and never see it coming. England fell. Almost all at once, within only months, England fell, and there were none who knew to stop it.

And then, when all the realm was cut off from the outside world, when England lay wholly caged between the realms, a ravaged wasteland of decay ripe for the plucking, then the monsters came. Then they marched, to finally ensure their victory and their vengeance, and fell upon that which their old enemy had loved. Their armies crossed the blackest portions of the King's Roads, crawled out of an endless night, and came to finish what their plague had not.

They did not, however, come wholly unopposed. Though their power had been too great to halt, and their plague too sudden to understand, England had regained her magic before they struck. England had fought by magic first, for the first time in three hundred years, and she was not wholly as defenceless as she seemed. In the midst of her sudden horror, there were those who tried to stem the tide and, when they realised that they could not, who tried to save whoever they could, and make a safe space for them to dwell.

The greatest of these champions was a faerie king. Not the Raven King, who to the rage and the dismay of many had not yet come to England's aid. This man, who had once called London his home, had only newly come into his power and his kingdom. A man of duty and regard, he came to England's side as soon as he perceived her distress. He stretched his faerie realm across the North, used it to bind the land to faerie instead of the spaces between worlds, and laid his protection across all that he had power to reach. He sent out word, to those magicians and champions yet remaining in England, to bring survivors to him, that they might be sheltered behind his walls and shielded by his power. Though he was not the Raven King, by the time the monsters came he was King in the North, and king of all that remained of England.

And so Lost Hope became Last Hope, the Great Redoubt, the Silver Citadel of England Remaining. So Stephen Black became a king in either world, and held the last of England's survivors safe within his power.

Yet he was a new king still. Even with those faerie kingdoms that had become his, he was not a powerful king. Not as Faerie measured such things, not as Hell measured them, not as the worlds beyond the King's Roads measured them. Not as the monsters, those creeping authors of decay, had measured them. So they came for him. So their armies came, marched from blackest night unto his door, and the darkness laid siege to all that was left of England.

And within the walls of Last Hope, in the face of all despair, those champions yet remaining began to search desperately for some means of driving them back.

"Where is he? He's never been this late before. Not unless something's happened. Did something happen? Do you think something happened? Where is he?"

Emma Wintertowne watched John Segundus as he paced in flurried agitation around the Council Chamber. In truth, the room was more in the way of an informal meeting room, looking more like a strange combination of an English parlour and Faerie court than anything else, but they'd found that people clung to formality in distress. The population sheltered in Last Hope preferred to think of it as a Council Chamber, and so a Council Chamber it had become. Although, at present, it was mostly an obstacle course for one very tired, very stressed magician, and a theatre for those who must perforce watch over him.

She looked around at them. Stephen, sitting exhaustedly by the fire with all his weary dignity, the prophet Vinculus sprawled on the hearth rug at his feet. Arabella, John's partner in scrying, who stood by the bookshelves and wrung her hands in sympathy as she watched him, Mr Honeyfoot at her side in equal distress. Sir Walter Pole, Emma's erstwhile husband, erstwhile Government Minister, and now advisor to the King of England Remaining, who had seated himself at one of the small tables and seemed to be trying not to be noticed. Thistlewitch, a faerie of what had been Lost Hope, now Stephen's seneschal, who seemed to regard John's distress with some distant bemusement. And herself, standing guard beside the door, her bandolier of pistols hung across her shoulder even now.

They were an odd group, she supposed. A desperate scattering of faeries, magicians, kings and scholars, survivors of the return of England's magic, and now most of those who held what was left of her together. Or most of those who tried, anyway. There was a face missing, now. There was someone missing, and it was they who drove John's dismay. Childermass had not returned from his mission beyond Last Hope's walls, many days after he had been due, and no-one much was taking it well. John Segundus, very obviously, least of all.

"He shouldn't have gone alone," the magician said, stopping suddenly in front of Stephen, staring down at him desperately. Stephen looked back with weary pity, and John held out his living hand as though pleading with him. "Stephen. We shouldn't have sent him alone. Anything could happen out there. All of us know it. Why did we send him alone?"

Stephen's eyes closed, etched lines of pain and worry creasing the skin around them, and abruptly Emma had had enough. She understood John's worry and anger, she did, but she would not stand to see it directed at Stephen. He didn't need it, nor did he deserve it, and certainly not on Childermass' account. That man did just about everything in his own time, and if anyone was responsible for his delay, it was almost certainly himself. John should know that. By now, there was not a one of them there who should not.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, John!" she said, rather loudly if Arabella's little squeak was anything to judge by. Segundus turned to her, wilting a little under her stern gaze, but he was too distressed to back down completely. Emma stalked forwards, glaring at him, and he glared back.

"It's not ridiculous!" he said, standing firm before her, both his hands held trembling at his sides. Well, the living hand trembled. The silver-and-leather one merely shook vaguely with the tremors in his arm. "You know what's out there, my Lady. What if he ran afoul of one of their patrols? Or if he stumbled into one of the Hollows and can't get out? What if ... what if ..."

He stuttered to a stop, his face going stiff and white with fear. What if. They all knew what if. There were a thousand of them, and in some places death only the least. A man, a living man abroad in the horror that England had become, might stumble onto any number of terrible fates, and no-one who loved him any the wiser. If Childermass was dead, if he had died in the wrong place or realm, then none of them would ever know about it. He would simply not come back, now or ever. He would be gone, and there would be nothing any of them could do about it.

That had always been true, though. From the moment England had started falling between the worlds, after the plague had hit, there had been no safe way to try and cross it. Anyone who had fought their way across country to Last Hope had found that out. They all knew, and they had all known when Childermass set out. Anyone who went out into the darkness knew what risks they took. That was why it had been him. Because Childermass, of all of them, was the most likely to take those risks in stride.

"... We had to send him alone, John," she said, somewhat more gently. He shook in front of her, her brave and terrified magician, and she wished so dearly that she might be gentle with him. He had to listen, though. He had to be made to listen. "Childermass walks in shadows. He's the best of any of us at illusions and secrecy. He's the one with the best chance of making it through. You know that. You have to remember it. There was a reason we sent him out alone."

"I know that," he said. He looked away. He bit his lip and looked down at the carpet, raising his living hand to wipe shakily at his mouth. "I know, my Lady. I do. But he's not ... He's not invincible. The magic affects him almost as badly as it does me, and you know how that ended!" He held up his false hand, a mute and explicit testimony. "If I had been alone, I wouldn't have survived. If Mr Honeyfoot had not dragged me from the spell's reach, I should have lost a great deal more than my arm. Who is ... Who is going to drag him out, should one befall him?"

There wasn't really an answer to that. Not a good one, anyway. None of them were easy with sacrificing even one life to save many, and Emma less than most, given her own experiences. She met John's eyes, the helpless pain in them, and struggled for an answer.

Stephen did not. He did not look at them, speaking mostly to the fire, but speak he did. Soft, and quiet, and somehow all of them found themselves listening.

"He asked for no-one," the King of Last Hope said, staring blindly into the flames. "He said it was an effort for him to mask other presences besides his own, and that he would need all his focus for himself. He could travel by himself in shadows, or with a larger group openly across the King's Roads, but only one or the other." He looked up, and his weariness really was plain for all to see. "There was no group we might have sent that would have survived open travel. Not with their armies so close at hand. We can send spies and thieves to sneak around them, but any small force we might send in the open would be destroyed completely, and we do not have a larger one. All my fairies must pour their energies into maintaining Last Hope. He said he would take none or all, John. I could only offer none. I'm sorry."

... That was not entirely true, Emma thought. Oh, that Childermass had said it, she had no doubt, or that Stephen had made the choice he had been offered, as little as he had wanted to. All of that she believed. It was that Childermass would really have found it so impossible to mask a companion that she doubted. He could have. She was almost sure of that.

It was just that the only people he would have trusted enough to watch his back were in this room, and there were none of them that he would willingly take into such dangers as awaited him. How could he? John had almost died the last time he had ventured out there. Arabella and Mr Honeyfoot were tougher now than they had once been, but they were not suited to combat should it come. Neither Stephen nor Vinculus could be allowed to fall into enemy hands. That left only herself as even a possible companion, and their relationship was ... tempestuous still. In that sense, at least, she would have caused him effort in his magic, distraction. He walked into untold danger. Distraction was something he could not at all afford.

So he had gone alone, by his own choice. He had walked beyond the reach of Stephen's protection, slipped through shadows into darkness and madness in an effort to see how great they were and what remained that might waylay them, and now he was late. Now he was late by two days, and there was nothing any of them could do about it.

In front of her, in the wake of Stephen's visible pain and Childermass' own determination, John Segundus wilted completely. He bowed his head, and she could see tears pressed desperately behind his eyelids. She couldn't bear them, and went the last steps to stand before him, to pull him to her arms and cradle him as he wept. In the silence of her mind, she cursed John Childermass for being the only magician among them with both the skill and the determination to be their spy. John could ill-afford to lose him. None of them could afford to lose him, not in their hearts. Yet he was the only one with power to go that would not cause Last Hope to fail should he be taken. He was, in effect, the only one expendable enough for the job.

"If only we had an army," she whispered viciously, holding her magician close. "Or those great and powerful magicians of legend. Or the thrice bedamned Raven King, for that matter! If only we had means to fight them. Magic is not worth the ruin of all. If it had to come back, bringing ruin behind it, it might at least have brought a solution also!"

"... Funny you should mention that," said a voice from somewhere behind her, a voice that had not been there a moment ago, and Emma had spun to face it even as it spoke, a pistol primed in her hand and John Segundus held securely behind her. She pointed her pistol at a patch of empty air in the shadows of the eastern bookshelves, and watched as a figure resolved itself from out of them. Battered, singed, and with something that might have been blood on his boots and smeared across his coat, but seemingly whole. Seemingly safe.

"Childermass!" John cried behind her, the moment the man became clear, shock and desperate relief in his voice. The rest of the room had stood in the same moment, and Emma knew there would be that same relief on every face around her. For her part, though, there was mostly anger. Relief, yes, even joy, but also anger. How damned long had he been standing there?! How long had he been listening to them mourn?! God damned magician!

He raised an eyebrow at her. Childermass. He cocked a brow at the pistol staring him in the face, a wealth of weary amusement and perhaps even some shadow of remorse in his expression, and spread his hands placatingly towards her.

"I should be grateful if you would not fire that, my Lady," he said, with a rueful smile tucked in the corner of his mouth. "Once between us was enough, do you not think?"

Emma snarled at him. "If you do not wish to be shot," she growled, "then you should enter a room normally, and announce yourself as you do so! You should not sneak into shadows and listen to the distress of others and speak only when it is your desire! If you would have me put this pistol down, then you will make a note of that for the future, and make a promise to me in good faith. Do I make myself clear?!"

He blinked. He was very pale, she noticed absently, exhausted and slightly hunched. He was not well, for all that it seemed he was not dying. He did not flinch from her, however, and neither did she from him. That much, at least, they would always grant each other now.

"... Forgive me, Lady Wintertowne," he said at last, and inclined his head stiffly in her direction. Stiff from pain, she thought, not reluctance. "You are correct, of course, and I am sorry. Shadows have become my habit, and I could not think of a correct moment to lower them until just now. It was wrong of me to leave you in distress, and I apologise for it, to all of you. I shall do differently next time."

He met her eyes, held them across the barrel of the gun, and there was such exhausted sincerity in them that Emma could not keep her anger. It had been a dirty trick. He should not have stood there and let them think him dead for even a moment longer than necessary. Yet he was tired, she could see it, and he had spent three weeks sneaking from shadow to shadow while avoiding every horror that the outside world had to offer. He might truly have forgotten how to lower them, she thought. A person might forget a great many things, in that wasteland. She could not keep a grudge against him for that.

So she did not. She lowered and holstered her pistol, and took such steps forward as were necessary to stand before him. He watched her warily, the whole room watched her warily, but she only looked up at him and held out an imperious hand.

"Come sit down," she said, as welcoming as she ever was with him, and even as she said it she saw relief soften the line of his shoulders, and exhaustion come only more visibly to the fore. She took his hand, gloved and filthy in her own, and tugged him gently towards the nearest chair. "How dead are you? Do you need one of Stephen's fairy healers?"

He blinked up at her, much bemused, and then he smiled faintly. "No," he said, shaking his head carefully. He pulled his hand from hers, not without pressing her fingers gently in gratitude, and reached up to shove dust-covered hair from his eyes. "There's naught wrong with me that some time to rest won't cure. That's the least of concerns now, though. I have news, my lady. Your majesty. I have what may be some very good news indeed."

They looked at each other. All of them. Stephen looked warily hopeful, Walter alarmed and interested, Thistlewitch curious, John and Arabella and Mr Honeyfoot mostly too relieved to be worried. Vinculus she could not interpret at all. Yet they all looked at each other, and Emma thought there was something of the same cautious optimism and latent dread in all of them.

"Well?" she said after a moment, when nobody else seemed about to. She looked down at Childermass, since she yet stood above him, and gestured impatiently for him to continue. "Are you going to give us this news, or would you prefer that we guessed?"

He blinked again, a flash of startled humour, and then he shook his head. He turned away from her slightly, waving his hand back towards the shadows he had emerged from, and when he looked back there was weary mischief in his gaze once more.

"How about I show you instead?" he said quietly, and behind him a creature emerged from his shadows. A man, or what had once been one. A handsome man in a British Army uniform, now gaunt and bearing that translucent complexion that marked him as the undead. They had seen a few of those on their fraught journey to Last Hope. This one did not seem like the others, though. He looked less degraded, less corrupt. When he looked at them, he seemed ... still sentient. Still knowledgeable of who he had once been, and what he now was. He moved with a careful soldier's gait into the room, and they might not have immediately known what to make of him had Arabella not gasped in sudden recognition.

"Major Grant!" she cried, moving forward to join Emma in the centre of the room. "Oh, but ... But you were lost, sir. I thought you fell in London, when the plague first came!"

Major Grant, since that was apparently who he was, shared a brief and wary glance with Childermass, but turned to bow to Arabella in recognition almost immediately. He smiled crookedly as he straightened, and nodded to confirm her statements.

"I was, Mrs Strange. I was killed, along with a great many others. I would be dead still, were it not ..." He paused, struggled, and then forged ahead. "Things have changed in London, ma'am. A great deal. Your ... Merlin has returned to us, you see. Merlin came and brought us back."

They blinked at him, none of them quite understanding. "Merlin?" Stephen asked cautiously. "You mean King Arthur's magician?" Grant did not answer him, though. Grant had eyes only for Arabella, and the look of dawning shock and understanding in her eyes.

"... Jonathan?" she asked, very quietly, not quite daring to be hopeful. "You mean that Jonathan has ...?"

"Aye," said Childermass, with a certain tired satisfaction. "And Norrell too. It would seem that their Dark Tower has finally wandered back our way. England shall have her great magicians once again, or some of them at least. And since your husband seems to have taken a turn for the necromantic in the process, Mrs Strange, we may have an army out of it as well. There are enough corpses in what is left of England to match any horde out of the darkness, and Strange brought Wellington back first. If they can pull something together between them, then we may have means to drive the demons back from Last Hope yet."

Emma sat down. Slowly, carefully, she pulled the chair beside him and sat down in it. Around her, she saw the others grip the backs of chairs or sink down onto the carpet themselves. An army. An army, and magicians of enough power to do more than sneak off into almost certain death. That was ... God. That was hope, more of it than any of them had dared to entertain in such a very long time. Even if it was Strange, even if it was Norrell, it was still ...

"We could break the siege?" John asked, very carefully and very quietly from where he had sat down almost at Emma's feet. It was Childermass he looked towards, though, in bleak and desperate hope. "Childermass. Do you think we could break it?"

Their spy stared down at him. For a moment, something very black and fierce altogether crossed his features, a hard and bitter determination in a thin face. Childermass met his gaze with eyes that had seen all the very worst of what England had become, and in that expression there was not a single inch of surrender. It was not a comforting expression. It was not gentle at all. Emma did not wish it to be. It was a wild face. It promised blood and war and magic, it promised victory whatever the cost and never a hope of surrender, and since those years she had spent a helpless slave, there was no expression that might comfort her more, and no promise that might better reassure her. Victory or death, victory in death, and never more to bow to an enemy's whims. Yes. She would have that promise above all others. It suited her very well indeed, and not only her.

"We will break it," Childermass said, soft and vicious in the Council Chamber of Last Hope. "We will break their siege, and drive them back from the lands that are not theirs, and we will show them the price for having ruined them. This land belongs to the Raven King, this land is none of theirs and we shall show them what it costs to have taken it. When our King returns, when he bloody gets up off his arse and comes back to us, he will not find his lands infested by those things. I'll not allow it. I'll be damned first."

... Not how she would have put it, Emma thought absently. She had no care for the Raven King herself, not even the somewhat embittered, tarnished care that Childermass and Vinculus still kept. He had gone, and he had not come back even as England was torn apart, and she could not be moved to care for him at all. She would not begrudge him as Childermass' motive, though. Whatever the man needed to keep himself fighting, he could have, and with her blessing. For the ferocity in his voice, for the determination that had let him walk alone through tortured paths to the charnel house of London and back again, bringing some measure of hope along beside him, he could have any damned thing he pleased.

And he was not wrong, she thought. Whatever his motives, he was not wrong in his determination to fight. Looking around her, looking at Stephen and Arabella and Vinculus and desperate John Segundus, looking at every grim and determined face that remained in England, she knew that Childermass was not wrong.

The siege would be broken. They would have only ruins left in its wake, but they would be clean ruins, they would be English ruins, and none of the creatures that had ravished them would be left to look upon them. That was a thing worth fighting for. That, before all else, was a promise Emma Wintertowne thought worth keeping.

Well then, she thought. Let them come. Let all of them be damned and come to die. The darkness would find no surrender here.

Not now, and not ever.

Chapter Text

An odd mood fell upon the Council Chamber of Last Hope, in the wake of Childermass' return and the incredible news he had brought along with him. Perhaps they should have been elated, Emma thought, perhaps there should have been fire and excitement and determination, but in truth it was mostly exhaustion that prevailed. Relief, and then exhaustion. Though she supposed that was not so unnatural. There was hope, where before there hadn't been. There were few things so exhausting as hope and relief combined, after so long a stretch without them.

There was a report, of course. A more detailed one was required than Childermass' bare-bones declaration. What had he seen? How were Strange and Norrell? How much of London had been raised from the dead? How treacherous had the paths been when he returned? How were they to contact London, now that they knew it lived? When were they to do so? And so on, and so forth. There was so much that had yet to be relayed.

It was largely Major Grant that made this report, though, the odd dry interjection from their spy aside. And the odd quelling glance, as well, as the undead major seemed to tread too close to something Childermass felt should not be shared with them. Emma suspected she knew what lay in those gaps in the report. She suspected that Childermass thought he was sparing them, skipping across the perilous parts so as not to worry them. She clenched her hand in her lap at every evasion, feeling John flinch faintly against her leg every time. Good god, but their spy was a fool. He was an idiot of the highest order, and she only bided her time before she would tell him so, and in no uncertain terms. There were necessities to be observed first, however. Professional matters must ever come before personal. Survival demanded nothing less.

The report trailed off eventually, and there was little enough to say once it had been made. They agreed that they would contact Strange and Norrell by communication spell tomorrow, after everyone had had a chance to digest all that had happened, and bluntly put after their spy had put himself back together again. Childermass needed rest, and given that he had fought his way to London and back to bring them this news, it was an entirely unspoken but unanimous assumption that they would not act upon it until he could do so alongside them.

This did not sit entirely well with Grant. It appeared that Strange had wished to contact them immediately, and had only consented that Childermass and Grant should bear his message at all because Childermass had told him that any foreign magic that attempted to access Last Hope now would be repulsed in rapid order, at great cost to everyone. There were things in England these days that would have no qualms about using the faces of missing loved ones in an attempt to destroy them. Last Hope had armoured itself against them, against magic and demons and decay, and had Strange attempted to breach them without a physical messenger to first pave the way, they would have reacted entirely on instinct. From the way Grant edged around the matter, Emma gathered that Childermass had stated this quite forcefully. She had a suspicion that he had, in fact, fought with the other magicians over it, and that they had conceded the argument with ill grace. Major Grant, who seemed to be something in the way of their grudging concession to necessity, wished to do his job as rapidly as possible, therefore, and relay his safe arrival back to them as soon as he could.

He had been overruled. Not that he had voiced an objection, as such, but he had opened his mouth at Stephen's decision to wait until tomorrow, and Stephen had gifted him such a calm, impassive look in response that he had hastily shut it again. Emma had been somewhat proud to see that even Arabella, who longed so much to see her husband again, would not be moved on the subject. It was only right, though. Strange and Norrell had survived this long without them. They could wait another day pending Childermass' health.

The mood had fallen in the aftermath of that decision, though. The strength of action, of information to be relayed and decisions to be made upon it, faded as soon as those decisions were settled, and they fell into a stilted silence in their wake. Arabella drew Grant aside, no doubt asking after her husband, and Stephen drew Walter and Thistlewitch into something of a huddle beside the fire as well. Vinculus was not inclined to move from the hearth, though he did not join them in their deliberations. He looked over at Emma, instead, his wicked little eyes twinkling knowingly at her. He knew full well what she meant to do next, and the old reprobate was thoroughly amused by it. Emma gifted him a sharp little smile in response. His amusement had absolutely no bearing on her actions.

She waited until Childermass let his head fall back against the chair. It did not take long. He had been exhausted enough to let Grant do most of the talking, she had not anticipated that he should last long once his duty was finally done for the moment. He faded off very rapidly indeed, sleep and sheer exhaustion stealing him away in no time at all. She nudged John, once it had happened. Mr Honeyfoot, behind them, had already crept away to fetch the necessities. He had anticipated them as easily as Vinculus, and with more gentility. Not that their spy deserved such, of course, but Emma supposed Mr Honeyfoot could not help his soft heart.

She stood, once she was certain that Childermass slept, and moved to stand above him once more. John Segundus came behind her, more gentle than she but perhaps equally as angry. He had noticed Childermass' evasions as well, the way he had directed Grant to fall uncomfortably silent at awkward moments. He had guessed as well what lay behind them, and was no more happy about it than she. They would have their truth now, though. They would see how much their spy had tried to keep from them.

A stuttered silence fell a little as Emma reached down to begin unknotting Childermass' neck cloth. It was small, and easier done than the coat, and if Childermass was not so deeply asleep yet then they should notice it before moving on to more difficult articles. When he did not stir, well and truly unconscious, she directed John to ease him forward enough that she might push his coat off his shoulders as well, and then began work on his waistcoat, unbuttoning it with nimble, angry fingers. Behind them, Grant audibly stuttered to a halt, and a small silence developed over by the fire as well. Emma glanced up, looking defiantly at Stephen, and their king looked away again, a small and weary smile on his face. Her ex-husband looked away also, more stiffly and with red staining his cheeks. Emma did not care much about that. It had been a long time since she had.

"What ... Forgive me, what are you doing?" Major Grant stammered suddenly, almost striding back across to them. She blinked at him, trying to decide if it was offended propriety or some nascent protective instinct towards Childermass that moved him. "Why are you ... My lady, you are stripping him!"

Ah, Emma thought. Mostly propriety, then, though perhaps a little of the other as well. She dismissed him, accepting Childermass' weight so that John could finally manage to ease the coat fully out from under the man. Good, she thought, as he lifted it up to examine it carefully. Well done, John. He could not manage buttons very well any longer, the false hand was too clumsy for it, but he had long since ceased to let that stop him from being useful. He hung the garment from the dead arm, and rifled through it quickly with the living one. He looked back at her, and shook his head in some relief. No major holes or slices, then. The blood seemed to be largely someone or something else's.

"Yes, we are stripping him," she replied to Grant, almost absently since she was in the process of worming Childermass' waistcoat off his shoulders, letting John take his weight back again so that she could untuck the ends of his shirt after it. "Why? Do you have an objection to it?"

Grant stuttered. "You ..." he said, looking helpless at Arabella, who only shrugged somewhat apologetically back. "I mean, why, your ladyship?"

Emma ignored him for a moment, as she and John between them finally wrestled the shirt over Childermass' head, earning themselves a vague groan in the process but no actual return to wakefulness. When Childermass had said he needed some time to rest, clearly what he had really meant was that he was half an hour away from falling dead of exhaustion. It was only once they had laid him back against the chair, now half-naked and with his cuts and bruises at last plainly to be seen, that she looked back at the corpse of a soldier standing awkward and half-panicked behind them.

"Because," she said, very sharply. "Because magicians lie, sir, they hide things, and this one is the most bloody stubborn of the lot. Because he directed you to disguise things from us, and you did so, and now we must see his injuries for ourselves." He opened his mouth, and she slashed her hand across the air between them, cutting him off instantly. She had no care for excuses at present. "Do not trouble yourself, sir. You made the mistake of listening to him, and now you must simply pay the price. Kindly leave us to our business. Unless, of course, you have had a sudden change of heart? Unless you wish to tell us what it was he wanted hidden?"

"There's no visible spell damage," John said softly, while Grant merely opened and closed his mouth helplessly. She looked back at him, since he was so obviously the more useful of the two. He'd cupped his living hand behind Childermass' head, the dead one resting carefully against their spy's chest. Childermass slept on oblivious, resting limply in John's keeping, and John's expression when he looked up at her was heartbreaking. "I can feel nothing, Emma. No wasting, no sickness. No curse or taint of magic. Whatever he wanted to hide, he ... I don't think he is hurt. Not badly, at least. It's only cuts and bruises, and maybe some tenderness around the ribs and shoulders. He is unwounded."

"It was only a small ambush," Grant said behind her suddenly. Stiffly, warily, but with obvious shame when she met his eyes. He shrugged, very awkwardly and apologetically. "I only thought he wanted to spare the ladies. I mean ... That is, I'm sorry, your ladyship. It truly wasn't bad. He had these little cards, they seemed to direct us away from difficult spots. We only saw combat once, and only briefly. Something cut through his spell of concealment, he wouldn't tell me what, and we fell afoul of a patrol. He regained his magic in rapid order, and we killed two of the six demons before managing to retreat. It was a small action. I only thought that he did not want to alarm you. You are ... I mean that you are ..."

Emma stared at him. Mr Honeyfoot had returned, by this point, and she was dimly aware of him bustling around at the table behind her, setting basins and tinctures down, soaking cloths in warm water and handing them down to John so that he might begin setting Childermass back to rights. She should help with that. She would, in a minute. She had only a little thing to say, first. Major Grant had been dead for most of England's fall. She understood that it was not his fault that he didn't know these things. Someone must explain them to him, though. If he was to be of any use to Last Hope at all, someone must clearly explain things to him.

"... Major Grant," she said, taking a small step closer to him and running one hand gently but obtrusively across her bandolier, reminding him that she was armed. "You have been away, sir. I think there are things you do not understand. You must allow me to explain them to you, all right?" She smiled at him, and he swallowed worriedly. He was dead. He should have no more cause for fear. It pleased her slightly that she might still cause it anyway.

"... Of course, ma'am," he said, and behind him Emma saw Arabella smiling faintly. Painfully, yes, but also genuinely. The other woman nodded at her across the major's shoulder, knowing exactly what Emma was about to explain, and Emma nodded back with the faintest smile of her own. She turned back to Grant, and the smile faded before a darker, more serious sort of look.

"There is no-one in this room who has not seen horrors," she said to him quietly. "Ladies, men, fairies, humans. Those things out there have no care. None of us have escaped, sir. We fought our way to safety. Most of us here went back out, once we had achieved it. We patrolled. We sought information. We went back to pick up stragglers. Mr Segundus, behind me, lost his hand to a wasting spell on one such expedition. Mrs Strange saw six people torn apart by a demon patrol while scrying for a group we had lost. I killed my first creature to prevent it from killing a mother and child, and though I did kill it, I did not succeed in saving them. There were too many, and I was too inexperienced then. I have become better, since then. We all have. We have all been tested, we have all suffered horrors, and we have all come through the other side. There is no-one here, sir, who needs sparing any longer. There is no-one here who can possibly be more alarmed by the truth than by evasion. Remember that. It is secrets that kill us, sir, not truths. Do not lie to us again."

He blinked at her. He was stiff, and gaunt, and dead. The plague had killed him, before ever he had to see the ruin that England had become. It was nonsensical to see him as an innocent, when he was a soldier and had undoubtedly seen other wars, yet to them in many ways he was. He did not know how things worked any longer. He had not seen. He had not fought. He was an innocent, Major Grant, and he had stumbled across bad initial company when it came to understanding the propriety of things. Childermass could not manage explanations if his life very literally depended upon it. Childermass was a stubborn, stupid idiot, and Grant could have done so much better for a guide to how things were.

Not, perhaps, much better a guide to survival. That they had both made it from London through every army, ruin, spell and horror in England proved that much. It was only that Childermass had developed some odd ideas about the importance of his own survival that had led them to this juncture.

"I am sorry," Grant said, more slowly now and more genuinely. He looked to the man behind her, unconscious still and now on his way to cleaned and bandaged. He shook his head, a curious expression on his bone-white face. "He did not wish you to know. He has not led me wrongly, this past week, and this is his home. It seemed prudent to listen to him. In that, it seems I was mistaken, and I am sorry for it."

"He doesn't tell us things," John said quietly, looking up at them at last, leaving Mr Honeyfoot to mop quietly at Childermass' forehead. "Since they have surrounded us so completely, he and a few of the fairies are the only ones who can go out with any regularity. He doesn't want to tell us what happens to him out there. I think he is afraid we would make him stop going if we knew." He looked down, worrying angrily at the straps of his false hand. "I do not help that. I would stop him, if we could afford it. If I didn't know ... I would like to make him stop. I would like it very much. He knows that. He hides things from us because of it."

"He is an idiot," Emma summed up after him, much more succinctly. She reached down, rested a hand on John's shoulder comfortingly. He smiled lopsidedly up at her, and she had to resist a sudden urge to kick Childermass' unconscious shins. Damnable man. Stubborn, idiot, damnable magician. She ought to have shot him again. That would keep him from going anywhere in a hurry. That would keep him ... Damnit. It would keep him safe. For the half an hour, at least, before he took it into his head to bloody well crawl somewhere dangerous, it would give them a moment's worth of peace.

"They love him, you know," Vinculus piped up suddenly. He was lying back on the hearth rug, his arms crossed over his blue chest, his feet crossed at his ankles, watching them all like they were the very best of plays. "The lady and the one-handed magician. Couldn't have picked a worse idiot if they'd tried, but they do love him. Wouldn't be so angry at him else, would they?"

Emma stared at him. Her hand was still on her bandolier. She gave a brief moment's thought to simply shooting every man there, with the possible exception of Mr Honeyfoot, who was sweet, and Stephen, who was ... at present, palming his face in wearily amused exasperation. Ah. Perhaps she wouldn't spare Stephen then. Vinculus, divining her thoughts effortlessly, cackled at her for them. He clambered gracelessly to his feet, patting a stiff-faced Stephen on the arm, and ambled over to peer down at Childermass. He did not flinch as he passed her. He gave her an evil little wink, instead. Then he stood there, for a moment, staring down at their sleeping spy, and leaned down with an odd expression on his face to ruffle Childermass' filthy hair.

"It's good you're back, magician," Vinculus told the unconscious man quietly, an odd little smile on his face. "No-one makes life interesting like you do. Best entertainment to be had, you are. Would have been a shame if you'd been killed."

He stood back then, smiling sunnily at them all, and offered a small bow towards Stephen. "I'm away to my bed, my king," he informed them lightly, waving a hand in the air. "Wake me if anything else interesting knocks on our door, hmm?"

Stephen rubbed vaguely at his temple, but nodded at him. "I'm sure you'll be among the first to know about it," he commented wryly. "Goodnight, Vinculus. I'm sure the rest of us will not be long after you. Those of us who are not already asleep, at least." He smiled slightly towards Childermass. Thistlewitch, behind him, clearly thought they were all the most fascinating study in human oddity that she had ever seen. She smiled a fairy sort of smile, and waved a vaguely menacing goodnight to Vinculus as well. Around this point, Emma decided that perhaps, in this one respect, their prophet might have the right idea after all.

"I think we might retire as well," she decided, looking down at John, and then over at Mr Honeyfoot. "Can you two carry the idiot between you? He needs to be poured into a bed, I think. Heaven knows where he's been sleeping for the past few weeks. And no," she said, holding up a hand towards Grant. "You needn't tell me. If he hasn't been sleeping, I don't want to know about it. I'll only end up shooting him."

Grant, with an admirably blank expression, closed his mouth again. Arabella pressed a hand to hers, striving valiantly to hide her smile. Emma grinned at her, and moved across to take her hands for a moment.

"I hope Jonathan is well when you see him tomorrow," she said, very seriously. She held the other woman's hands, squeezed them comfortingly. "I'm glad that he will be returned to you, Arabella, for however long it might be. I hope all goes well for you, my dear."

Arabella blinked at her, tears gathering around the edges of her smile. She squeezed back, and then pulled Emma forward into a brief embrace. "I'm glad you got yours back as well," she said, with something not too far from composure. "Try not to shoot him. I understand the temptation, but it probably wouldn't help anything. Men are too stubborn to be moved by such things."

Emma laughed, kissing her on both cheeks before withdrawing. She looked over at Grant, and cocked an eyebrow back at Arabella. "I take it you will be showing the Major to his rooms?" she asked, a little slyly. Formality may have been clung to after the Fall of England, at least to an extent, but certain other aspects of society had been less so. Or perhaps, she admitted, it was only that they were the Council of the King, Stephen's advisors, and so could get away with so much more. "You will want to ask him some more questions, I think? About your husband?"

Arabella punched her in the shoulder in response. Only lightly. "Go put our spy to bed," she instructed coolly, her face perfectly straight to hide her smile. "The rest of us shall deal with things as sense and propriety demand. I'm sure of it."

"We're ready, Emma," John interrupted quietly. She turned to him, to meet his exhausted, tentatively peaceful expression with her own. Mr Honeyfoot stood beside him, with Childermass slung awkwardly between them. His head hung against John's chest, his hair matted and dusty still, his skinny chest all marked with bruises. She felt a surge of something, at the sight of him. A terror close to weeping, a fury at the ruin of the world around them. She felt a rush of helpless, bitter anger, and a hot, fierce desire for the army that Strange and Grant promised them. She wanted to see it. She wanted to join it. She wanted to shoot and stab and fight until every last one of those things was cleared from their path, so that they should never lose anyone to them again. She wanted it so fiercely. There were three men stood before her, friends and a king behind her, and she could not bear to lose any of them. Not even Walter, no matter how stiff things still were between them. She would give anything to protect any one of them.

They knew it, too. They saw in it her, as they saw it in each other. None of them needed sparing any longer. They all knew what they would do to keep each other safe. Some tension spooled out of her, at the thought. Some of the fury fled, since in this company it was unneeded. She moved across to touch John's cheek gently, to cup her hand for a second around Childermass'. She smiled at Mr Honeyfoot, who was a gentle soul and put up with so much from them all.

"Let's get ourselves to bed, gentlemen," she said. "We have a war to plan tomorrow, and a siege to break. We should get some rest, I think."

"Amen," said Stephen, very softly behind them. He stood straight, and calm, and immovable as the kingdom he had built. He looked at them, their saviour and their silver king, and smiled a smile that was not peaceful at all. Emma echoed it back to him, and proudly.

Yes, she thought. Tomorrow they would fight. They would plan, and fight, and win, or they would die trying. But not tonight. Tonight, they were not dead. Tonight, those who had been lost had come back to them. Tonight, they would all climb into their respective beds, with whoever it best pleased them to share with, and they would get some rest.

There was, after all, nothing so exhausting in all the world as hope and relief combined.